Innovating to build resilience in food systems

A consortium of over 50 food systems practitioners attended the workshop “Innovations for Building Resilience in Food Systems,” organized as part of the WFSC’s a flagship research project on the topic of resilience in food systems, led by Prof. Johan Six.

Enlarged view: Resilience Workshop

The WFSC established a flagship research project on the topic of resilience in food systems, led by member Prof. Johan Six. This project has taken a broad perspective of resilience, considering the building of capacity in a food system to recover from a shock. In the framework of this project, a collaboration was established between the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (UNFAO) and the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture. This collaboration aims to identify, discuss, and disseminate tools and innovations.

The workshop “Innovations for Building Resilience in Food Systems,” organized in the frame of this collaboration, was held on 18 May 2017 at ETH Zurich. A consortium of over 50 food systems practitioners from government, academia, industry, and the non-for-profit sector attended. The aims of the program included (1) sharing the latest knowledge, innovations, tools, and best practices; (2) identifying research gaps and discussing policy implications and current findings; (3) comparing experiences in different contexts (north vs south); and (4) applying the concepts of resilience building to case studies.

In the afternoon, the workshop afforded the opportunity for the attending practitioners to come together to brainstorm about innovations for building resilience in different contexts.

Some insights from the successful workshop included:

  • Open markets and open minds are necessary for more resilience.
  • Innovation is connected to knowledge, and players from academia and also extension services have an important role to play.
  • Partnership and working together are the core concepts of strengthening resilience.
  • Resilience in the food system needs to be along the entire food value chain.

The summary report for the workshop can the downloaded Downloadhere (PDF, 1.5 MB).

Enlarged view: Resilience Workshop
Workshop participants working on case studies (Image: WFSC)
WFSC Flagship Project

The Flagship Project "Enhancing Resilience in Food Systems" tackles the question "with so much uncertainty and complexity, how can we make food systems more sustainable under multiple, unpredictable drivers of change?" It is an initiative of the ETH Zurich World Food System Center, the Sustainable Agroecosystems Group, the Climate Policy Group, and the TdLab, led by WFSC member Prof. Johan Six. Find out more here.

JavaScript has been disabled in your browser